Beach photo shoot, warning contains some very white legs!

Finally a day free from rain or gale force winds! Armed with a box of projects that needed to be photographed we headed down to the beach today. We had done a little playing with the new camera but today was our first ‘shoot’ with it. We purchased the Canon EOS 1100D a few months ago and it is a great camera with all the features we were looking for. A 50mm fixed lens for indoor shots in my ‘studio’, and an 18-55mm lens for everything else (zoom, stabiliser etc.). I have spent the past couple of months mainly photographing indoors and experimenting with various lighting set ups. I promise I will post the failures and successes soon. Working outdoors meant there was a chance to experiment with aperture effects; having so much lovely landscape around us meant we could have lovely blurry backgrounds to the clear project. And being aware of framing the shot meant piles of socks and sandy shoes were always near to hand when the toes got too chilly.

We knew that photography outdoors would be particularly challenging due to our very changeable weather. We used the ‘Creative Auto’ setting on the camera and let it do most of the work. Lighting was our challenge today, the sun was so bright. I am reeeeeeally not complaining about the sun, but too much sun is as difficult as too little. The blacks items were shining away in the sunlight making the yarn look like plastic. So time to improvise, the large umbrella from the car was perfect. It evened out the light casting just enough shade.

Things learned; bring more towels, although the tide was well out, it was still very damp down on the rocks! And the rocks are very cold in January! Dogs like to see what you are doing, and dogs fresh from the tide catcher pool are like muddy wet bombs just primed to go off all over your hard work! Refreshments need to be plentiful, thank goodness for the snack vendor at the beach today. Katie is not very good at catching crabs, Katie will work for ice cream, Katie is very good at casting a shadow in the right places (if or when she stands still), unlike her Mum (who can stand still like a Boss).

Speaking of cold in January, why else would we all be having to show off so much whiter-than-white leg? It was an odd sight, jeans rolled up to the knees, bright woolly socks – what a vision, all we needed was a knotted hanky on our heads and grandpa asleep on a deck chair with a newspaper over his face.

I really enjoyed our first major shoot today, I think my fantastic assistants did too! We were all amazed that 3 hours just flew past and that we had taken 282 pictures!

Jane

x

Doug’s turn:

3 hrs! Who knew?! But it was fun, we each had photos taken of us unexpectedly, we’re mischievous with each other like that. Bizarre that in the chilly January air we were shielding ourselves form the wonderful sunlight – all in the name of art.

Control of the gadget (camera) was my job, most important. Well, tea and biscuits from aforementioned vendor was most important too. So was keeping Katie entertained. And ice cream (with flake). All most important. I had a most important job, second only to the project leader of course. And our be-freckled young first-time model.

It certainly didn’t feel like 3hrs, and it was a relief seeing the photos downloaded to the PC and seeing that yes, in fact we took some fine shots. Followed by a well earned toffee nut latté, not too pretentious?